Southeastern Wilds, Iceland

Things Found In The Wild

Emerging from the wilderness of Iceland's southeast seems as close a terrestrial homecoming as one can get without departing the planet - until the moment fades and the country's more typical surroundings regain their own bizarre status. I've spent the last few days trekking all across the wilds of this otherworldly terrain, constantly amazed and bewildered by what I discovered.



Acquiring a car added a serious sense of surrealism, as Iceland's vistas change suddenly and drastically even on foot. Cruising along at 90 km/ hour, they transform in the blink of an eye from something you never expected to see to something you never thought existed. I went from stretching desolate plains to winding snowy mountaintops to sparkling blacksand beaches to muddy marshes to rolling grassy fields to weird green lumpy expanses to lava rock plateaus, all over the course of a couple hours. Each section seemed to vanish into forever, but was so quickly replaced that it was startling.

I spent one day exploring the majority of Skaftafell National Park - home to some amazing waterfalls, as well as access to the largest glacier outside of the Arctic. Walking on a glacier is itself an otherwordly experience - from below me and for great distances around was nothing but silence, except for the occasional deep snap or rumble as something really big breaks somewhere, and the climate shifts just a tiny bit more.



After a long day of trail hiking, I retired to a hostel in the "town" of Hvoll, which is basically just the hostel, where I had the entirety of the 40-room place to myself. Spring brings later sunsets, and I found an ideal spot to enjoy that fact - out back I lay in the green grass beneath a spotted blue sunny sky, sheltered by a large boulder from the cooling winds. In the distance I could hear the occasional squawking of puffins, and nearby the constant murmur of streams that continued out across seemingly infinite gray plains to a distant sea, appearing as a mere glistening sliver on the horizon. A few degrees warmer and I may have spent the night there. A few more degrees and it might have consumed my week. It's a place I hope to see again - a rare perfect spot.



The rest of my time was spent in constant adventure and exploration. I've found the hostel attendants to be invaluable fonts of information regarding local wandering, and this proved no exception. I wandered the length of a basalt column beach, discovering a seemingly inhabited shed several kilometers from anything. Whoever lived there definitely appreciated their wine. I climbed a trail marked "Impassable" just to prove a point, and discovered a derelict lighthouse, too far from the water to be of any use. I found an unmarked waterfall that I could walk behind, and stood so that all my senses were overwhelmed by it - the watery roar of absolute oblivion. It was awesome, in the biblical sense.



I did find a number of friends in the small places of those quiet expanses. My day of beach trekking was accompanied by two of the nearby town's playful puppies that looked identical to every other dog in the entire country. I named them Indigo and Beryl. Here is the latter trying very hard to figure out what to do with my lunch. He eventually solved the problem - turns out the answer was in biting.



And here is a fellow explorer, posing blasé before one of the more spectacular natural wonders she and I discovered. Iceland has park benches absolutely everywhere, and they are consistently pointed in the one direction where there is nothing to see. While perplexing, it's actually quite an impressive feat, as there are very few things to not see here. Hmm... I wonder if that sentence means anything at all.

I soon depart Iceland with some heartache at wonders left undiscovered, but excited with both the knowledge that I will surely one day return, and that I now continue my strange sojourn.